The Evolving Role of State Societies

Today, our guest is Jen Cryder. Jen is CEO of the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants. That’s great. I did not stumble through that, like I did when we talked ahead of time, but I’ve heard great things about Jen and what they’re doing. Pennsylvania—I think one of the largest societies out there, and I’m excited to have Jen on the show today. Jen, welcome to The Unique CPA.

Randy, thanks so much for having me.

Yeah. Your name has come up twice in the last couple of weeks talking to other people, and actually, going back a month ago, it came again as well because I saw you were on Accounting Today’s “Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting” list. So congratulations on that.

Thank you. Yeah, we both made the list together for the first time this year. It’s a pretty exciting experience, but I think, really reflective of the work that my whole team’s doing. 

Exactly the way I look at it too. I am very spoiled that we have a great team, and I can go do the things I love doing. And the fact that I made the list means that “we” made the list because everybody else that I work with supports that.

Exactly.

Before we jump into wherever we go today, which, there’s so many topics I think we could talk about, which would be exciting. But why don’t you give us you know, I think you’re two years into this role now, but you’ve been with the society for a while. Give us your background where you came from. ‘Cause not every state leader comes from public accounting, but I know you did, so why don’t you give us the background of where you came from and how long you’ve been doing this?

Yeah, absolutely. So I am a CPA by background, and I think that gives me a little bit of a different perspective sometimes. So I was in public accounting for about 15 years in the Philly market here, and I started my career with a regional firm just outside of Philadelphia, and that firm was like, I don’t know, a hundred people, something like that. Really tight knit culture to the point where we would all sit down in the lunchroom and dinner together during busy season, and just super, super close.

And I think back and that was such a fortunate experience for me to have early in my career, because not only did I get to see a little bit of everything across the firm, but just, it was such a nurturing environment, and a culture that I use as the benchmark a lot of times today in my role, because it was so outstanding. While I was there, the firm merged twice, so it went from that smaller regional firm up to at the time of the second merger into EisnerAmper, it was like a top 15 firm or something like that. So when I started my career, I had about a hundred colleagues. By the time I left the firm about 15 years later, I probably had 1300 colleagues all across the country. Really big shifts in culture and the type of work and all of those things.

But I think nothing could have prepared me better to be CEO of a state society than to see all of those pieces. So all I ever wanted to do was an audit partner. I loved public accounting. I I think that was built for it. But I saw an opportunity open up and student CPAs, and it it was just too great to pass up. So about nine years ago, I came over to be the CFO, and then I pretty quickly added on the chief operating officer responsibilities for most of my time at PICPA—I was a CFO-COO combination. And I really loved that role be able to combine my financial background with the operational and the ability to run the business today and see the impacts of putting all those pieces together was pretty interesting. And then about two years ago, I got tapped for the CEO role, and so have shifted into that role much more external focused on stakeholders, members, and representing CPAs out there in the profession nationally, which is incredibly exciting. 

So we represent about 20,000 members of PICPA—one of the largest state societies. So really a diverse mix of the profession here in Pennsylvania and some interesting conversations that we get to be part of nationally.

Yeah. That’s pretty cool. I’m hearing more and more and more from state societies and what you’re going through—it seems like state societies are really becoming I don’t know if the right term, but more active, more there more in the forefront and helping, you know, whatever they can to move the profession forward. So there’s a ton that I can ask you. But before I do that, you got me going already because culture is something I’ll talk about all day long. I think culture is so important. I think culture sets the base for everything. 

So, you know, not to put you on the spot or anything—but obviously, going from the small regional, going through two mergers, this is something that I think about a lot because with all these mergers going on in the profession, how do we maintain—well, hopefully, we have a good culture in place already—but how do we continue to maintain that culture, and can we maintain that culture when you’re mixing two different organizations? Just from a personal experience, how did you see the culture change in those mergers that went through?

Yeah. So I saw essentially two different mergers, and they were quite different. So the jump from a small regional firm up to, you know, a pretty large national firm was significant and it changed a lot in the day to day. Many things stayed the same—the focus on people, the focus on serving clients type of work. Like, a lot of that stayed the same but the culture and the way that we went about those things changed a lot. So the good news with the second merger was going from know, say a 600 person national firm to a 1,300 person national firm, there was far less bumpiness felt, because it already had changed. 

So that second merger, I almost would pull out of the discussion because it was much more seamless. I think the the part that was really felt by employees because I was probably, I don’t know, a senior at the time—you know, relatively early in my career, that first merger—we felt a lot of that down in the trenches going from this little tiny office where we would all sit down together and have dinner. You could be sitting next to the managing partner eating dinner talking about last night’s football game or, you know, the local Fourth of July parade, and then all of a sudden overnight, the people that are making those sorts of decisions and having that kind of influence on your career are in a different city.

Right.

There’s so many things you can do to smooth that path, but it’s never going to be without bumps because it is just so very different. So what can firms learn from that, or what can they take from it? I would just say being really intentional about the employee experience there, because I think that in my case, there were a lot of people in our local office here in our area that spent a lot of time thinking about each person individually. So as we were going through this experience, looking at me as like a senior auditor—what does Jen need? Where is she in her professional development? What are some opportunities we can open up for her? What are some different learning paths that she could engage in? So I was incredibly fortunate that I had these fantastic people connect me into a couple of places where I had an early kind of link into the culture of the new firm.

Yep. My impression is that it’s just, I mean, our firm currently is 80 people. We, at 80 people, and that’s not—I mean, you were talking 600 you went to. 

Right. 

At 80 people, I’m starting to get nervous. Can we continue to have this culture of friendship that we have right now? And so we try to do everything we can. But man, I just don’t—it’s almost like you’re going to just have your group within the overall culture when you go from, I don’t know what you were, but, you know, fifty people to 600 or whatever number. And so far, I am nervous about it—I think we are intentional about keeping a good culture, but that’s one reason that I asked that question is okay, how do we continue to make sure that the people are the most important thing, and they know that they’re valued when you grow. So, that’s the key, I think.

Yeah. That personal connection.

Oh, that is so huge. You know what? I shouldn’t go on this tangent because I do it every episode, but you know, John Garrett and his book, What’s Your “And”?, that is just so important, the value of the—I don’t know if you’re familiar with John and his book?

Yeah! Yeah.

To value the person and who they are outside of work as much or more than who they are in work. I think that’s part of building the culture. And something that you said that John recently talked to me about is, you know, you were saying that personal connection. You’re sitting, you’re talking about the parade. You’re talking about—maybe I shouldn’t say this because they recently lost—but what the Eagles did this weekend or what the, we’ll say the Sixers did, or whatever. You know, or what your family did. That personal connection, I think, is so important. In John’s research, he found someone else that found these data that all it takes is 40 seconds true interaction with somebody, you know, not, you know, how is this project doing? It’s, how was your weekend? How was your daughter’s volleyball game? How was the dinner you went to? 40 seconds is all it takes for somebody to feel value in their job and that to me, is just…

That’s interesting.

Yep. And so culture is important.

And in my experience, I was so fortunate to have those mentors and those sponsors who created that personal connection for me. And then the way that they turned that into buy-in was they used that personal relationship in a really productive way and they said, I know you value these things as a person—I’m going to go find you these opportunities in this new landscape. I’m going to take that and connect it in. So they showed me pretty quickly, like, really early into the merger, they showed me, here’s what success is going to look like for you in this new landscape, in this new environment. And I could see other people in the firm who were not being as successful through the transition, and either they weren’t shown those connection points, or they weren’t taking advantage of them—whatever the case may be. Throughout the whole time, I remember thinking to myself over and over again my goodness, I’m so lucky to be here. I have unlimited opportunities. My gosh. This is the best thing that ever happened to me. And it’s because there were people that knew me and knew how to connect me into that.

Okay. So if you haven’t been on John’s podcast, I’m going to introduce you, because you need to go on John’s podcast because that story is unbelievable. So I think that’s awesome. That is great to hear that. And I have a similar story where I talk about the first firm I worked with, and when I left there—and I didn’t want to leave—I just felt that I had two years’ experience, it was time to go to another firm.

Yeah.

Long story short, the other firm did not have that personal connection. And in fact, it was a micromanager who I just couldn’t deal with, and I honestly walked out and didn’t go back one day, and called the old firm and told them I left, and their immediate response was, do you want to come back here? And I was like, man, this is the culture that I want to build when I build a firm as well. 

So alright. Enough tangents. Let’s go back to, well, that’s not a tangent. That’s a great story. I love it. But let’s go back to that, you know, the Pennsylvania Institute. Do I have to say the whole thing? Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accounts.

You can say PICPA. Just don’t call it “Picpa,” that’s all we ask.

Alright. You know what? My producer, he did say the one that you said “don’t say,” when he told me who I was talking to today. So I’ll go with PICPA. So let’s go back to what you’re doing there. You’re seeing, obviously, so many things happening in the profession, and you’re, you know, doing what you can to, you know, I’m sure, better the profession, better the individuals, better everything about what we’re doing, because we do have an employee crisis. We do have a pipeline crisis. But let’s talk about—I’m going to open the floor to you: What are the key things that you’re seeing going on that you as the association are trying to address?

Yeah—there’s a couple of them. I would start first with one of the greatest surprises I’ve found, becoming CEO of the PICPA, is just the impact that my organization and other state societies have on the profession on a daily basis. I’m blown away by it. Because our profession is state regulated, there are so many really critical conversations that happen that I get to be a part of. And I think back to those early days of my career, and I think would that person have ever imagined? So the answer is “no” for sure.

But what’s most exciting to me about our work is that it’s incredibly impactful. When I became CEO two years ago, I set a vision for the organization, and that vision is to lead from the front because I’ve been there and I’ve been in practice, and I know how hard it is to pick your head up from the day to day. So I committed to our members in Pennsylvania, we’re going to lead from the front and help you survive and thrive in this profession.

There’s two areas that we’re really focused on right now. The first one obviously is pipeline and human capital, so I’ll talk about that for a second. But I think the second issue is more critical, which is employee experience, retention, and that gets into a lot of firm business model things. So I would say a lot of the conversation is focused around pipeline and licensure right now, but I’m trying to suggest for our members, let’s shift that to retention and firm business model, because we need to solve for that, really, to maintain the relevance of our profession.

Oh, I agree.

There’s been so much talk about it. I would suggest, let’s not spend too much time here, because there are a lot of different factors at play, there are no simple solutions, and you gotta really take a holistic look at it. We published some research a couple of weeks ago, our insights report on pipeline and it showed when you look at the choice of accounting major, you have to get to students in high school. That’s something that we have started doing really well together as a profession, but maybe not until recently. And then when you look at the choice to become licensed as a CPA, there are a lot of things that impact that choice. Certainly, the education requirement, the 150 is a part of it. And I’m excited that AICPA and NASBA are taking a really hard look at that right now. There are some ideas on the table that I never would have imagined, and that’s great—let’s look at all of them.

But our research shows that it’s a lot of things. That’s one factor, but really what’s happening is students are making this very educated choice to say, if the amount of time and energy I invest in my career, my profession, doesn’t return, then I’m not going to choose a career as a CPA. And so our research actually showed something very interesting: that it’s much more about the time that they’re investing. The students are feeling like they’re not getting a return on that time invested. And I think that directly points to firm business model. Because for better or worse, many people are still beginning their career in a firm. It’s not exclusively on firms, but, you know, mostly. So if we know that students are looking for an adequate return on time and energy invested, first of all, “Hey, you sound like you’re going to be a great CPA,” right?

Yes. I was thinking that. 

And second of all, let’s figure out what makes that time and energy return, you know? It’s education requirements for licensure, sure, that’s part of it, but it’s so much more than that. So really then, kind of shifting into, what is life like in a firm, you know? And this is where my practical experience, the good, the bad, and the ugly, probably comes into play a little bit more than somebody that hasn’t lived it: We have to make these experiences in firms really good. And not every firm that I encounter is thinking that way. 

There’s still definitely a bit of that legacy mindset of this is a profession, and it’s your honor to be here. It is absolutely an honor to be in this profession. But so much has changed and we have to think about weighting employee experience, culture, work, salary, all of those things in a really, really different way. So that was a lot. I’ll pause there because I can see you’re just dying to jump in.

Well, no. It’s just like you I mean, you’re giving me goosebumps talking about this because I think that’s the most important. I think as much as anything, and it’s not just perception, but there’s a perception issue too. I mean, it’s like, okay, yeah, I’m going to work eighty hours a week, and I’m going to be nonstop. I’m not going to see my family from, you know, January 31st till April 15th, and then I’m going to recover for two months. And then, you know, maybe I get on extensions, and then I go through it again. And it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s so many things we—that alternate business model, or that, what was the other thing you said?

Alternate practice structure, yeah.

I want to expand on that because I don’t know what that means. But I think I’m going to like it. But I just, to me, when you just say, the things have to recognize that we need change, I think that just all goes back to culture. That’s why I get so excited about culture. When I go out and talk about culture—and not to stereotype, but there’s a lot of people in the audience that look like me, my age and everything else about me. And the thing they say is, well, how do I train people if, you know, whatever? Let’s say it’s a remote environment. If I’m in a remote environment, how do I get them to come in and see how you have face to face meetings with with clients? Well, you know what? That’s the next generation of business owners—that’s not how they’re going to do meetings too. You know, if you’re talking to a boomer, that’s it, but that’s not who you’re going to be dealing with in the future. 

So seeing that there’s things changing, I think, needs to happen. And you mentioned there’s a legacy thought process going on too often. And I’ll say it—you don’t have to agree, I don’t want to put you on the spot—but I just see so much innovation going on in the modern startup firms. And there’s so many good things going on in the legacy firms. So if we can get those two to figure out best practices from both, I think that’s going to help a lot.

Yeah. That’s one of the really cool things about my role in this organization: I get to travel around the state of Pennsylvania, which is huge, and we have such a range of firms—from very small firms up to the biggest in the world—and I get to interact with them all and learn what those best practices are. And I really see our role, in PICPA, I see our role as being a force multiplier, right? Taking all those best practices and figuring out, how do we leverage those for the benefit of the profession? So a lot of times what we’ll do is take ideas that come from the largest firms, where they’ve got a really deep set of resources, and figure out, how do we bring that to smaller firms? How do we scale that in a way that they can access those ideas with those resources? 

Because I think you’re absolutely right. There’s such an amazing opportunity right now for the smallest firms, especially those that are leveraging technology, innovation, you know, rethinking things—there is so much work out there, far more work than anyone can handle. And so for those small firms, I think that the growth trajectory is just off the charts.

Alright. So I mentioned that I’m going to be excited about this next answer: The alternate practice structure, which I think I know what that is. I originally, I’ve heard about this from a few of these more modern firms that I talked about. I mean, I talk about this guy all the time, and I love him, and unfortunately, he just passed away last October, but Josh Lance, you know, built this firm. He was managing partner with a 20-person firm or a 25-person firm, but his ownership structure was different. You didn’t have to, you know, go through, you know, 15 years of grinding through the firm before you became a partner, you could be an owner of this firm if you met some simple criteria. You know, Chase Birky at Dark Horse is building a new way to do things. I’ve heard of these really interesting ways that people are, one, getting people excited about public accounting, so I want to hear your thoughts. This alternate practice structure, what is it, and what do you see happening?

Yes. I think we’re going to see more and more of this. So alternate practice structure is a pretty broad term and it just means different forms of ownership. So the traditional accounting firm ownership model for a hundred plus years was always pretty similar, right? You hire a lot of people in at the base of the pyramid, they work their way up, and it’s not until you become a partner or an owner in the firm that you really get to share in the growth of the firm. So alternate practice structure just means sort of throwing out that traditional pyramid model, and thinking about it in new and different ways. 

So the most common one that we’ve seen in the last couple of years is Private Equity—it is not brand new to our space, but in the last couple of years has emerged as a major factor. So Private Equity coming in, bringing a lot of capital. It’s no secret that buckets of capital are needed, given the investments in technology and people these days. So it makes sense from that perspective. But the thought has always been, as private equity comes in, or even some of these other models, how do you incentivize people earlier in their career with some sort of ownership? And that takes a firm to be built really differently than that traditional pyramid model. 

So whether it’s private equity, whether it is, the ESOP plan, we’ve seen that recently. We’ve seen wealth management firms buying accounting firms. Lots of different variations—I think the variations will continue. But the important point is incentivizing earlier career ownership in the firm. I think that changes the game in terms of talent retention, certainly in terms of attracting talent, but really retaining talent. Because if you think about it, if you’re losing say, a manager five years into their career, oftentimes you’re losing them to a client who is a middle market company offering them stock options or something like that. And for somebody at that stage of their life to say, well, I can keep grinding it out until I make partner, and then I’m told the rewards are great, although I’m not really sure because nobody ever really shares it.

Exactly, right.

Or, this client is offering me, you know, equity based compensation right now, and I can see in the marketplace what that would be valued at, and things like that, you start to understand why somebody would make that choice. So I think that it’s really interesting that firms are starting to go down this route. We’re seeing this happen. Certainly, it started with the largest firms. I predict in the next year or two, we’ll see it impacting firms of much smaller sizes, which is so very, very interesting to me. And, you know, so how do we leverage that to change the game in terms of talent attraction and retention?

Yep. It all goes back to that too, because if they’re excited, if they want to stay, if they see the opportunity—and that’s one thing you mentioned. You know, “I think I can do pretty well if I make partner at some point.” That is just not [something within] reality. Do you, as an organization, do you do salary surveys or anything? Do you publish that information?

I mean, we do some benchmarking data.

Yep.

You know, it is obviously ranges and benchmarks and things like that. But I think it’s important when I’m talking to high school students, especially, our data shows that you’ve gotta talk to high school students. If you want to convince somebody to become a CPA, high school is the time to talk to them. So whenever I have a room full of high school students, I use some of that salary range data, because I do not want them to have to wait until 10, 15 years into a career to start evaluating that number.

Yep.

The numbers are good, so let’s tell them that now—that message around financial stability really resonates with high school students. And so we use that as a talking point along with here’s the impact of the work, right? Here’s how as a CPA you can help a client, whether it is a family-owned business, or whether you’re supporting trust in the capital markets. Like, here’s the impact you make and here’s the kind of financial stability that comes with it. At least in the work we’re doing here in Pennsylvania, the data’s really clear that when you deliver those messages to high school students, you have a big impact on their interest in choosing a career in accounting.

Really. Because one of the things—and I agree, I completely believe that—one of the things though that I’ve seen recently with studies is that the starting salaries have not kept up, in public accounting, as with other careers. Now in the long term, we’ll probably can do better if you stick it out in public accounting. But I think that’s another issue is, like, how do we, one, how do we start to show that maybe, or how do we even get better starting salaries, you know, whatever. Finance degrees, IT degrees, I’ve seen, and you probably know the data better than me, but I’ve seen that those have increased quicker than the public accounting degrees. Is that something you’ve seen in your research?

Yes. That’s definitely true. Other professions have accelerated their salary growth faster than ours. And, you know, if you think about it back to, like, 2010, 2015, there were record supplies of accounting graduates.

Okay.

So simple economics are, when you’ve got such an overabundance of supply, the salary growth is going to slow down. And then I think what happened is a lot of things hit at once that flipped that switch just overnight, right? The pandemic hit, and a whole bunch of other things—generational shifts. And all of a sudden we found ourselves with this huge drop in supply, and our salaries were a little bit lower. I have seen firms make significant movement on salary, especially those first couple of years. So starting salary in the first two years into a firm. But we have not caught up with or kept up with tech and data analytics and some of those other professions. 

Now the interesting thing will be as we look at 2024, where the economy is changing a little bit, those salaries that accelerated more quickly than ours are probably coming down. We’re seeing more layoffs there. We’re seeing more of those kind of downside impacts. 

Right.

So with the work that our firms have done to accelerate, we may, you know, I don’t know where we’re going to land with that. But the stability of our profession, the long term earning potential starts to be weighted a little more heavily. As I talk to firm leaders, they’re seeing less issue recruiting people at the entry level. It really goes back to retention as the pain point now for those mid-career professionals.

Yep. Alright. So you just brought up retention again. You brought that up earlier as well. But retention, as you mentioned, key. Great. Once we get people in, how do we keep them in? The money aspect’s part of it, the work life balance is a huge part of it. In my mind as well. If someone comes in and they’re working 80 hours a week, they’re just, you know, why am I going to keep doing this? When you talk about retention, what are some of the things, then, that you’re looking at to improve? Is the 80 hour week—and maybe that’s gone—maybe I’m, you know, being the Boomer, that’s what I remember, you know, my public accounting days. I think that has come down a lot, but are hours of factor as well and what are other factors, to the retention aspect of things?

Sure. Sure. I do think hours are a big part of it, and the way that we talk about the hours and the work. I did my fair share of 80 hour weeks, and they’re not fun. 

Nope.

They’re just not. It doesn’t matter what generation you are. So we’ve gotta be realistic in terms of the market for talent today. Students have a lot of choices and can make a really solid living whether they choose to go to college or not. So the decision making framework is very different, and I think our profession’s got to recognize that and think about, we’re competing with a lot more than just do I become a CPA or an attorney?

Yep.

We’re competing with the trades and other professions that we would have never imagined. So when firms think about building the employee experience around that, I think you get to a really different place. The hours are a big part of that. It is so clear the generations that are in the workforce work to live and don’t live to work. So they’re not going to work 80 hours. It doesn’t matter how much you pay them. And I think that for some people who value the salary above all else, it’s hard to wrap your head around that. But it doesn’t matter if you pay them a little more. They’re still not going to work 70 or 80 hours. 

So I see firms starting to adjust in their hiring and their allocation of client workload to recognize this, because I think the model of firms for a long time was, just load it up, use that leverage model, people will put in the time during those busy seasons, and then we’ll give them time off over the summer or when it’s not a deadline. Firms are trying to figure out how to smooth the workload throughout the entire year.

Yep.

So that instead of working 80 hours a week for a couple of months and then 40, what does 40 to 50 hours a week consistently throughout the entire year look like? You have to change client expectations there, you have to change billing methods, you have to change the metrics by which you evaluate people’s performance—a lot of different things. So I think, when I talk to firm leaders, it’s pretty easy to get to the place of yes, I understand this conceptually and I want to do it, because I want to support people and give them good work-life balance, but really digging into all of those different pieces that you have to change becomes very difficult, especially if it’s a firm with a structure where it’s a partner group, and everybody’s got a vote. Because they’re looking at it and they’re saying, our firm has been more profitable than ever the last two or three years. That’s the reality. Firms have made more money than ever. 2020, ’21, ’22, ’23. And they’re looking at it and saying, why should we change this?

Yep. I’ve seen that for sure. I just think that, you know, short-term thinking is going to hurt the profession, and I think that is a short-term thinking. We have to look for the long term.

Exactly.

So for me, personally, I’m a tax guy. You’re an auditor. From a tax standpoint, I think it’s easier—and I don’t know Audit that well—but from a tax standpoint, I think it’s easier to solve the seasonality. Because if you’re doing advisory work, which all firms should be and are doing—if you’re doing the pre-planning, tax season doesn’t mean anything because you already know the answers before tax season. So if you extend everybody, I think you spread out the seasonality of the work. And I know a lot of people, at least, you know, coming up in the profession with me is like, I want to be done April 15th. I want my summer off. Honestly, it took me till August to recover anyways. So let’s just work less. Let’s spread out the seasonality of that. From an Audit standpoint, I don’t think that’s as doable, is it? I mean, there is more deadlines in my mind unless I don’t remember correctly.

No—it is very deadline driven. So it’s challenging. It’s a little bit harder to smooth out the work in audit because the deadlines usually are statutory, right? So either there’s a regulator that you’re trying to meet, or a bank, even, you know, some of those sorts of things. I think the answer to smoothing out the workload compression in Audit lies in technology.

Yep.

We’re seeing some really exciting things happen there. And I’m just fascinated by the way that AI and some of these other technologies are going to change the way we do the audit. I keep joking, when I’m talking to firms, I keep joking, I’m just going to show up because I want to sit in on an audit one of these days and see how much it’s changed since the last time I’ve done one. I think I would not recognize it, and that’s a positive thing, because when I was doing audits, we were footing numbers, and we were like ticking and tying on paper at that point. I think the way to smooth out the work is leveraging those technologies, so that—just like you said on the tax side—you already know the answer when the year end hits.

Yep. For sure. Alright, so I think we’re about to maybe close it out here a little bit, but I mean, I could talk to you all day about the things going on in our profession, but this is something you do get to do is look at what’s going on in the profession. So I’m going to just giving an opportunity to kinda you know, wrap up what we talked about, but really highlight these cool things that you’re doing, and what you’re really excited about happening with PICPA in the industry and in general.

Yeah. You know, our profession is facing no shortage of challenges right now. Human capital, you know, figuring out how to implement technology, changing our business models. These are all some really big, kind of media issues that we’re dealing with. So we’re trying to support our clients and our businesses through some really uncertain times, with a lot going on. 

The silver lining of that I think is that we have taken a hard look at our profession, collectively, and I see a lot of self-reflection, and this sort of questioning of like, what does it mean to be a CPA in modern capital markets, modern financial markets, modern businesses? And I see so many great answers coming out of that question being asked. So truly, I’m more optimistic than ever when it comes to the future of CPAs in our profession, as we look at the way technology is going to change the work, as we look at the amazing skills that new generations are bringing into our profession, you know, CPAs power trust, growth, and opportunity. We have never been more in need of those things. So overall, I’m incredibly optimistic when I think about 2024, and it’s really exciting, it’s an exciting time at PICBA to be kind of in the middle of that and representing a big group of CPAs in the profession.

I agree. And I tell everybody I’m very excited about this profession. I honestly see good opportunities, good things happening, and I know people feel we’re in a crisis mode, you know, with the people, but I think there’s plenty of solutions. And people like you are going to lead us there, so I appreciate that.

Well, in partnership with a lot of other smart people.

Right! Alright, so before we completely wrap up, but kinda couple final questions. We talked about, you know, the change in the profession and the work-life balance and all that. So let’s talk about that on you on a personal level. When you’re not leading this organization of 20,000 members or whatever it is, and making change in the profession, and trying to attract and retain people, what are your outside of work passions? What do you love to do for fun?

Yeah. So I’m the mom of two young kids. So fun for me right now is defined around them. My kids are 11 and 7, and just have so much energy, and keeping up with them is kind of consuming all of my time outside of work if I’m being honest. But they’re each at these points where they’re sort of discovering their own passions, which is really exciting to see. So, you know, I’m incredibly fortunate—my husband’s at home with the kids, and I’ve got an incredible support network there. And so in our free time, we’re, you know, traveling, or my kids love to cook with me. That’s a little dicey sometimes, but a lot of fun. 

Mmm hmm!

And we had a very intense game of Monopoly going last night.

Nice. That’s fun. Yeah, game nights, that’s one thing—our kids are older, 30 and 28, and a daughter-in-law that’s 28 as well. But the kids—time never gets, that’s always an exciting part. That’s always an “and” for me if we say what your “and” or what’s your passion. I think I mentioned—I may have mentioned—right now, my wife and I just got to Sonoma County last night. We’re here for the next 30 days. And our kids are going to come join us in about ten days for a three or four day weekend. So we’re excited about that as well. 

Oh, that’s fantastic!

Yeah, so family is, that’s always a fun time. 

Alright. And then, so if people want to see the only awesome things that you’re doing and PICPA is doing, or get ahold of you, where would they look?

Yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m often sharing the great stuff that we’re doing there. And then I would say go to PICPA.org to follow the rest of the organization and what’s going on there.

Alright. Well, Jen, I really appreciate you being on The Unique CPA today. I had fun hearing everything that you’re passionate about, and you’re doing as an organization. and, hopefully, our paths cross again in the not-too-distant future.

Absolutely, Randy. This was a lot of fun. Thanks so much.